My timing's off

I don't want to wake up early, sometimes at 6:30 a.m. My cat hasn’t even walked up onto my chest and butted me in the face to let me know she’s hungry. The light is barely getting going. The sun is very slowly hauling itself up and into this cloudy morning. Or I'll wake up with a start at 5:30 a.m. and (after sprinkling a few cat treats to keep the cat happy) I'll climb back into bed and drift off immediately; sucked into dreams with casts of thousands, often people with whom I’ve lost touch or who have left this world in some form or another. I dream of my father who is someone I’d like to speak with about just about anything and certainly about the precarious life we currently live. He died before the Berlin wall came down and before Russia dismantled itself. I speak to him by simply tilting my head. Dad, I say, do you believe this? It’s incredible…and then I wait for him to reply. There’s no voice but I feel better having spoken aloud to him; acknowledging the weirdness of the times in which we live and that I miss him.
     My timing’s off, I tell him. But he knows that. He’s seen me bumble around in life and has never outwardly cast any aspersions. He’s seen me rise early and fall asleep only to meet me in my dreams. He’s seen me unable to settle down at night, sometimes up until nearly 1 a.m., not even coming in the bedroom to lie down until after midnight. Gone is the 10 o’clock bedtime you could set your clock by. Read Jane Austen or Wilkie Collins my father would advise. It’s good advice. I always settle down after reading twenty pages of Jane Austen. And I love the Moonstone. Like a favorite chocolate, it never gets old; the desire and satisfaction combined in every (readable) bite.
     I made coffee this morning as I do every morning. Once I open the bag and scoop in the blackness, like scooping earth itself, and it fills the tan pleated folder and waits for water, even at that moment, before it’s really coffee, I’m repaired. At least for a little while. The smell of it is what does it. Anticipation is all about smell in coffee and I guess in many things. I read in the NYT that a little known definitive symptom of COVID-19 is the loss of smell. That’s news that should be passed around. I’m not sure buried in a feed that information will be read by enough people. You’d notice not noticing smells wouldn’t you? That’s my thought. Slight cough, feeling off, aches and pains…and no ability to smell whatsoever. I know someone who hit his head and for nearly a year he couldn’t smell. That would be torture for me. I smell everything. I smell tree bark and weeds and (yes, coffee) and garlic and just so many things. I rush up to them and insist they produce a smell. I’m like a child that way. It’s a kind of instant happiness that invades me when I’m able to waft in aromas. And that’s not even talking about the memories they invoke; old bookstores and libraries, a funny green soap that reminds you of elementary school, that crisp, distinctive icy smell ­­before a snowfall.
     So if my timing’s off (and I suspect yours too) what do I/we do to mellow out? For me it is to look out the window as the snow falls. The luxury of being in rural pandemic-land is that the fields are laying out there unencumbered by people and you can walk down and come close to the river, the mountain standing behind it. It's the nature-cure of fixing all broken things. I’m grateful for that. Try to find your cure. Be sure and smell a block of cheese, the cat box or open a bag of coffee and put your nose in there. Take deep breaths of things. And at night, if you’re unable to sleep, read Jane Austen.

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